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It doesn't even have to be remotely imminent. Assuming that you can grasp infinity, then all you have to teach is, "We will inevitably win in a finite amount of time." For example, an evil cult might say, "Eventually nonexistence will triumph over existence. The heat death of the universe is...

I think that Green Ronin's "Book of the Righteous" does a pretty good job of dealing with this question. I could also address this question in the terms of my campaign, which is truly polytheistic and not henotheism as is typically seen in D&D. Most characters in my campaign world are not...

The thing about using "Tucker's Kobolds" is that you should take inspiration from Tucker but not do what he did. https://www.enworld.org/threads/tuckers-kobolds-really-that-tough-a-challenge.248319/page-2#post-4619616 The goal of "Tucker's Kobolds" should be to be fair to both players and...

Alignment is something that if you don't have you usually have to invent. It need not be D&D alignment in the classic 3x3 grid, but it needs to be something that says explicitly on the character sheet, "This playing piece is meant to be more than just a pawn with a move set." Most systems tend...

One wonders how you think that's a strong argument. And for the record, I linked to my definition of a railroad. It's therefore very definitely and literally printable. There is even a little menu item on the brower you are using for that purpose should you wish to prove it to yourself. If...

Ummm... did Hasbro deliver a bunch of money? I thought the whole Daggerheart thing was because Hasbro wouldn't pay them. If they don't even support their own system, what was the point of it? I mean the campaign was originally in Pathfinder (Percy was a Gunslinger). They dropped that for...

I just don't even bother to play with people who tell me that the improv a sandbox anymore. Honestly, at this point, if someone tells me how good they are at improv, it's just a massive red flag. The whole game is likely to be, "Whatever." Certainly, quests weren't at the forefront of play...

The Dragonlance adventure path was the first time I remember this becoming a big debate, precisely because by the text the adventures had a lot of very heavy handed railroading advice. Railroads had occurred before in D&D, but not campaign length ones and not with just heavy handed devices for...

That's true of a linear game because you can generally expect where the next session is going to be. But in a true sandbox you are unlikely to guess what is going to happen. Generally speaking, I'd only expect to be able to prep for only the next session in a sandbox campaign if and only if it...

IF I'm using a Schrodinger's Map then objectively I'm still railroading you even if you don't know it, don't catch me, and enjoyed the adventure. The question is though, "Is that a problem?" In my opinion it can be depending on the player's aesthetics of play. If a player is primarily playing...

If we accept this description, then there would have been no discussion about railroads while there existed an assumed and reinforced discourse about the GM-centric model. But of course, railroads occur and were discussed and examples of techniques for creating one occur from a very early...

I think that is a grotesquely simplified version of not only RPG history but the dynamics of play. My reading of the very first RPG campaign as conducted by Dave Arneson is he very much wanted to run an open world sandbox with lots of player agency and player driven goals but that his players...

So, interesting experiment. I have thoughts about it but I don't want to give spoilers.

Sandboxing isn't the opposite of railroading. Sandboxing or "open world" is the opposite of a linear adventure or "adventure path". But it is appropriate to think of sandboxing as "off-roading" anyway I think. The defining trait of a sandbox is that you prepare far more content than you...

This is clumsy implementation of the Tiny World railroading technique often by a GM who self-deludes themselves into believing that they run sand boxes (often by GMs who do little prep). Typically such GMs are effusively dismissive of GMs that railroad. As a result, they remove from the Tiny...

I think there is a very compelling argument that a game becomes a railroad when the GMs track laying and railroading techniques are so artless and clumsy that they become obvious and grating to the players.

Sure but this can verge on the GM saying, "Your character wouldn't do that." Indeed, having a game system that encourages the players to take beliefs, bonds, goals ect. and then encourages the GM to invent scenarios specifically to "challenge" those beliefs, bonds, or goals is a pretty hard...

The problem with this is that either you have to accept a dungeon map is an example of railroading, or else accept that railroading is so ubiquitous and essential to RPGs that the term has no meaning. In real world, people don't have unlimited agency. You and I are rather constrained in what...

This is called a "Rowboat World". You can go anywhere but you have to put in all the effort and the vast majority of what you find will be just empty, meaningless and featureless. It's an example of a dysfunctional sandbox the way a railroad is an example of a dysfunctional adventure path.

Well, we seem to be on the same page. A good starting point for what I think is this thread: https://www.enworld.org/threads/techniques-for-railroading.298368/ The reason for this is that people treat "railroading" as a qualitative thing like, "Are you railroading or not?" It's actually a...